Tuberculosis vaccine may lower Alzheimer’s risk in
cancer patients
Currently, Alzheimer’s affects one-in-ten adults over
the age of 65 — a number that is expected to triple by 2030. The need to find a
cure is great. In the backdrop of the following facts, researchers have
developed a TB vaccine that lowers rates of Alzheimer’s disease in cancer
patients.
There may soon be a glimmer of hope for patients of
Alzheimer’s disease. A research team headed by Herve Bercovier, Charles
Greenblatt and Benjamin Klein at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU)’s
Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics has discovered that the
Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, originally developed for tuberculosis
and commonly used to treat bladder cancer, may also be an effective
treatment to prevent Alzheimer’s. The study was published in the journal PLOS
ONE.
“There’s data reaching back to the 1960s that shows
that countries treating bladder cancer patients with the BCG vaccine had a
lower prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease but it hadn’t been properly analyzed,”
shared lead author Bercovier.
Until now Bercovier and his team followed 1,371
bladder cancer patients receiving treatment at HU’s Hadassah Medical Center.
The average patient age was 68. During follow-up visits, 65 cancer patients had
developed Alzheimer’s.
Those who had not received BCG as part of their
treatment had a significantly higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s than did
BCG-treated patients: 8.9 per cent (44 patients) as opposed to 2.4 per
cent(21). Further, when compared with the general (healthy) population, people
who had never been treated with BCG had a 4-fold higher risk for developing
Alzheimer’s than did those who were treated with BCG.
30.12.2019
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